thought experiments

A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is meant to test our intuitions about morality or other fundamental philosophical questions.

History

The ancient Greek , "was the most ancient pattern of mathematical proof", and existed before Euclidean mathematics, where the emphasis was on the conceptual, rather than on the experimental part of a thought experiment.

Johann Witt-Hansen established that Hans Christian Ørsted was the first to use the equivalent German term . Ørsted was also the first to use the equivalent term in 1820.

By 1883, Ernst Mach used in a different sense, to denote exclusively the conduct of a experiment that would be subsequently performed as a by his students. Physical and mental experimentation could then be contrasted: Mach asked his students to provide him with explanations whenever the results from their subsequent, real, physical experiment differed from those of their prior, imaginary experiment.

The English term ''thought experiment'' was coined as a calque of , and it first appeared in the 1897 English translation of one of Mach's papers. Prior to its emergence, the activity of posing hypothetical questions that employed subjunctive reasoning had existed for a very long time for both scientists and philosophers. The irrealis moods are ways to categorize it or to speak about it. This helps explain the extremely wide and diverse range of the application of the term ''thought experiment'' once it had been introduced into English.

Galileo's demonstration that falling objects must fall at the same rate regardless of their masses was a significant step forward in the history of modern science. This is widely thought to have been a straightforward physical demonstration, involving climbing up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropping two heavy weights off it, whereas in fact, it was a logical demonstration, using the thought experiment technique. The experiment is described by Galileo in (1638) (from Italian: 'Mathematical Discourses and Demonstrations') thus:

Uses

"Thought experiments are basically devices of the imagination. They are employed for various purposes such an entertainment, education, conceptual analysis, exploration, hypothesizing, theory selection, theory implementation, etc. Some applications are more controversial than others"

Examples of thought experiments include Schrödinger's cat, that was meant to attack the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics by showing that its assumptions could lead to the seemingly absurd condition of a cat being simultaneously alive and dead, and Maxwell's demon, which attempts to demonstrate the ability of a hypothetical finite being to violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

It is a common element of science-fiction stories.

Thought experiments, which are well-structured, well-defined hypothetical questions that employ subjunctive reasoning ( irrealis moods) – "What might happen (or, what might have happened) if . . . " – have been used to pose questions in philosophy at least since Greek antiquity, some pre-dating Socrates. In physics and other sciences many thought experiments date from the 19th and especially the 20th Century, but examples can be found at least as early as Galileo.

In thought experiments, we gain new information by rearranging or reorganizing already known empirical data in a new way and drawing new (a priori) inferences from them, or by looking at these data from a different and unusual perspective. In Galileo's thought experiment, for example, the rearrangement of empirical experience consists of the original idea of combining bodies of different weights.

Thought experiments have been used in philosophy (especially ethics), physics, and other fields (such as cognitive psychology, history, political science, economics, social psychology, law, organizational studies, marketing, and epidemiology). In law, the synonym "hypothetical" is frequently used for such experiments.

Regardless of their intended goal, all thought experiments display a patterned way of thinking that is designed to allow us to explain, predict, and control events in a better and more productive way.

Theoretical consequences

In terms of their theoretical consequences, thought experiments generally:

* challenge (or even refute) a prevailing theory, often involving the device known as reductio ad absurdum, (as in Galileo's original argument, a proof by contradiction),
* confirm a prevailing theory,
* establish a new theory, or
* simultaneously refute a prevailing theory and establish a new theory through a process of mutual exclusion

Practical applications

Thought experiments can produce some very important and different outlooks on previously unknown or unaccepted theories. However, they may make those theories themselves irrelevant, and could possibly create new problems that are just as difficult, or possibly more difficult to resolve.

In terms of their practical application, thought experiments are generally created to:

* challenge the prevailing status quo (which includes activities such as correcting misinformation (or misapprehension), identify flaws in the argument(s) presented, to preserve (for the long-term) objectively established fact, and to refute specific assertions that some particular thing is permissible, forbidden, known, believed, possible, or necessary);
* extrapolate beyond (or interpolate within) the boundaries of already established fact;
* predict and forecast the (otherwise) indefinite and unknowable future;
* explain the past;
* the retrodiction, postdiction and hindcasting of the (otherwise) indefinite and unknowable past;
* facilitate decision making, choice, and strategy selection;
* solve problems, and generate ideas;
* move current (often insoluble) problems into another, more helpful, and more productive problem space (e.g.: functional fixedness);
* attribute causation, preventability, blame, and responsibility for specific outcomes;
* assess culpability and compensatory damages in social and legal contexts;
* ensure the repeat of past success; or
* examine the extent to which past events might have occurred differently.
* ensure the (future) avoidance of past failures

Types

Generally speaking, there are seven types of thought experiments in which one reasons from causes to effects, or effects to causes:

Prefactual

''Prefactual (before the fact) thought experiments'' – the term prefactual was coined by Lawrence J. Sanna in 1998 – speculate on possible future outcomes, given the present, and ask "What will be the outcome if event E occurs?".Also, see Garbey, Joerger & Furr (2023), pp. 112, 126.

Counterfactual

''Counterfactual (contrary to established fact) thought experiments'' – the term '' counterfactual'' was coined by Nelson Goodman in 1947,Goodman, N., "The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals", ''The Journal of Philosophy'', Vol.44, No.5, (27 February 1947), pp. 113–128. extending Roderick Chisholm's (1946) notion of a "contrary-to-fact conditional" – speculate on the possible outcomes of a different past; and ask "What might have happened if A had happened instead of B?" (e.g., "If Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz ''had'' cooperated with each other, what would mathematics look like today?").

The study of counterfactual speculation has increasingly engaged the interest of scholars in a wide range of domains such as philosophy, psychology, cognitive psychology, history, political science, economics, social psychology, law, organizational theory, marketing, and epidemiology.

Semifactual

''Semifactual thought experiments'' – the term ''semifactual'' was coined by Nelson Goodman in 1947 – speculate on the extent to which things might have remained the same, despite there being a different past; and asks the question Even though X happened instead of E, would Y have still occurred? (e.g., Even if the goalie ''had'' moved left, rather than right, could he have intercepted a ball that was traveling at such a speed?).

Semifactual speculations are an important part of clinical medicine.

Predictive

The activity of prediction attempts to project the circumstances of the present into the future.See Yeates, Lindsay Bertram (2004). ''Thought Experimentation: A Cognitive Approach'' (Thesis). pp.&nbs
139–140141–142145
Also, see Garbey, Joerger & Furr (2023), pp. 112, 127. According to David Sarewitz and Roger Pielke (1999, p123), scientific prediction takes two forms:

# "The elucidation of invariant – and therefore predictive – principles of nature"; and
# " singsuites of observational data and sophisticated numerical models in an effort to foretell the behavior or evolution of complex phenomena".

Although they perform different social and scientific functions, the only difference between the qualitatively identical activities of ''predicting'', ''forecasting,'' and ''nowcasting'' is the distance of the speculated future from the present moment occupied by the user. Whilst the activity of nowcasting, defined as "a detailed description of the current weather along with forecasts obtained by extrapolation up to 2 hours ahead", is essentially concerned with describing the current state of affairs, it is common practice to extend the term "to cover very-short-range forecasting up to 12 hours ahead" (Browning, 1982, p.ix).

Hindcasting

The activity of hindcasting involves running a forecast model after an event has happened in order to test whether the model's simulation is valid.

Retrodiction

The activity of '' retrodiction'' (or ''postdiction'') involves moving backward in time, step-by-step, in as many stages as are considered necessary, from the present into the speculated past to establish the ultimate cause of a specific event (e.g., reverse engineering and forensics).

Given that retrodiction is a process in which "past observations, events, add and data are used as evidence to infer the process(es) that produced them" and that diagnosis "involve going from visible effects such as symptoms, signs and the like to their prior causes", the essential balance between prediction and retrodiction could be characterized as:

regardless of whether the prognosis is of the course of the disease in the absence of treatment, or of the application of a specific treatment regimen to a specific disorder in a particular patient.

Backcasting

The activity of '' backcasting'' – the term ''backcasting'' was coined by John Robinson in 1982 – involves establishing the description of a very definite and very specific future situation. It then involves an imaginary moving backward in time, step-by-step, in as many stages as are considered necessary, from the future to the present to reveal the mechanism through which that particular specified future could be attained from the present.

Backcasting is not concerned with predicting the future:

According to Jansen (1994, p. 503:

Fields

Thought experiments have been used in a variety of fields, including philosophy, law, physics, and mathematics. In philosophy they have been used at least since classical antiquity, some pre-dating Socrates. In law, they were well known to Roman lawyers quoted in the Digest. In physics and other sciences, notable thought experiments date from the 19th and, especially, the 20th century; but examples can be found at least as early as Galileo.

Philosophy

In philosophy, a thought experiment typically presents an imagined scenario with the intention of eliciting an intuitive or reasoned response about the way things are in the thought experiment. (Philosophers might also supplement their thought experiments with theoretical reasoning designed to support the desired intuitive response.) The scenario will typically be designed to target a particular philosophical notion, such as morality, or the nature of the mind or linguistic reference. The response to the imagined scenario is supposed to tell us about the nature of that notion in any scenario, real or imagined.

For example, a thought experiment might present a situation in which an agent intentionally kills an innocent for the benefit of others. Here, the relevant question is not whether the action is moral or not, but more broadly whether a moral theory is correct that says morality is determined solely by an action's consequences (See Consequentialism). John Searle imagines a man in a locked room who receives written sentences in Chinese, and returns written sentences in Chinese, according to a sophisticated instruction manual. Here, the relevant question is not whether or not the man understands Chinese, but more broadly, whether a functionalist theory of mind is correct.

It is generally hoped that there is universal agreement about the intuitions that a thought experiment elicits. (Hence, in assessing their own thought experiments, philosophers may appeal to "what we should say," or some such locution.) A successful thought experiment will be one in which intuitions about it are widely shared. But often, philosophers differ in their intuitions about the scenario.

Other philosophical uses of imagined scenarios arguably are thought experiments also. In one use of scenarios, philosophers might imagine persons in a particular situation (maybe ourselves), and ask what they would do.

For example, in the veil of ignorance, John Rawls asks us to imagine a group of persons in a situation where they know nothing about themselves, and are charged with devising a social or political organization. The use of the state of nature to imagine the origins of government, as by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, may also be considered a thought experiment. Søren Kierkegaard explored the possible ethical and religious implications of Abraham's binding of Isaac in '' Fear and Trembling''. Similarly, Friedrich Nietzsche, in '' On the Genealogy of Morals'', speculated about the historical development of Judeo-Christian morality, with the intent of questioning its legitimacy.

An early written thought experiment was Plato's allegory of the cave. Another historic thought experiment was Avicenna's " Floating Man" thought experiment in the 11th century. He asked his readers to imagine themselves suspended in the air isolated from all sensations in order to demonstrate human self-awareness and self-consciousness, and the substantiality of the soul.

Science

Scientists tend to use thought experiments as imaginary, "proxy" experiments prior to a real, "physical" experiment ( Ernst Mach always argued that these ''gedankenexperiments'' were "a necessary precondition for physical experiment"). In these cases, the result of the "proxy" experiment will often be so clear that there will be no need to conduct a physical experiment at all.

Scientists also use thought experiments when particular physical experiments are impossible to conduct (Carl Gustav Hempel labeled these sorts of experiment "''theoretical experiments-in-imagination''"), such as Einstein's thought experiment of chasing a light beam, leading to special relativity. This is a unique use of a scientific thought experiment, in that it was never carried out, but led to a successful theory, proven by other empirical means.

Properties

Further categorization of thought experiments can be attributed to specific properties.

Possibility

In many thought experiments, the scenario would be nomologically possible, or possible according to the laws of nature. John Searle's Chinese room is nomologically possible.

Some thought experiments present scenarios that are not nomologically possible. In his Twin Earth thought experiment, Hilary Putnam asks us to imagine a scenario in which there is a substance with all of the observable properties of water (e.g., taste, color, boiling point), but is chemically different from water. It has been argued that this thought experiment is not nomologically possible, although it may be possible in some other sense, such as metaphysical possibility. It is debatable whether the nomological impossibility of a thought experiment renders intuitions about it moot.

In some cases, the hypothetical scenario might be considered metaphysically impossible, or impossible in any sense at all. David Chalmers says that we can imagine that there are zombies, or persons who are physically identical to us in every way but who lack consciousness. This is supposed to show that physicalism is false. However, some argue that zombies are inconceivable: we can no more imagine a zombie than we can imagine that 1+1=3. Others have claimed that the conceivability of a scenario may not entail its possibility.

Causal reasoning

The first characteristic pattern that thought experiments display is their orientation
in time. They are either:

*''Antefactual speculations'': experiments that speculate about what might have happened prior to a specific, designated event, or
*''Postfactual speculations'': experiments that speculate about what may happen subsequent to (or consequent upon) a specific, designated event.

The second characteristic pattern is their movement in time in relation to "the present
moment standpoint" of the individual performing the experiment; namely, in terms of:

* Their ''temporal direction'': are they past-oriented or future-oriented?
* Their ''temporal sense'':
** (a) in the case of past-oriented thought experiments, are they examining the consequences of temporal "movement" from the present to the past, or from the past to the present? or,
** (b) in the case of future-oriented thought experiments, are they examining the consequences of temporal "movement" from the present to the future, or from the future to the present?

Relation to real experiments

The relation to real experiments can be quite complex, as can be seen again from an example going back to Albert Einstein. In 1935, with two coworkers, he published a paper on a newly created subject called later the EPR effect ( EPR paradox). In this paper, starting from certain philosophical assumptions, on the basis of a rigorous analysis of a certain, complicated, but in the meantime assertedly realizable model, he came to the conclusion that ''quantum mechanics should be described as "incomplete"''. Niels Bohr asserted a refutation of Einstein's analysis immediately, and his view prevailed. After some decades, it was asserted that feasible experiments could prove the error of the EPR paper. These experiments tested the Bell inequalities published in 1964 in a purely theoretical paper. The above-mentioned EPR philosophical starting assumptions were considered to be falsified by the empirical fact (e.g. by the optical ''real experiments'' of Alain Aspect).

Thus ''thought experiments'' belong to a theoretical discipline, usually to theoretical physics, but often to theoretical philosophy. In any case, it must be distinguished from a real experiment, which belongs naturally to the experimental discipline and has "the final decision on ''true'' or ''not true''", at least in physics.

Interactivity

Thought experiments can also be interactive where the author invites people into his thought process through providing alternative paths with alternative outcomes within the narrative, or through interaction with a programmed machine, like a computer program.

Thanks to the advent of the Internet, the digital space has lent itself as a new medium for a new kind of thought experiments. The philosophical work of Stefano Gualeni, for example, focuses on the use of virtual worlds to materialize thought experiments and to playfully negotiate philosophical ideas. His arguments were originally presented in his 2015 book ''Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools''.

Gualeni's argument is that the history of philosophy has, until recently, merely been the history of written thought, and digital media can complement and enrich the limited and almost exclusively linguistic approach to philosophical thought. He considers virtual worlds (like those interactively encountered in videogames) to be philosophically viable and advantageous. This is especially the case in thought experiments, when the recipients of a certain philosophical notion or perspective are expected to objectively test and evaluate different possible courses of action, or in cases where they are confronted with interrogatives concerning non-actual or non-human phenomenologies.

Examples

Humanities

* Doomsday argument ( anthropic principle)
* The Lady, or the Tiger? (human nature)While the problem presented in this short story's scenario is not unique, it is extremely unusual. Most thought experiments are intentionally (or, even, sometimes unintentionally) skewed towards the inevitable production of a particular solution to the problem posed; and this happens because of the way that the problem and the scenario are framed in the first place. In the case of ''The Lady, or the Tiger?'', the way that the story unfolds is so "end-neutral" that, at the finish, there is no "correct" solution to the problem. Therefore, all that one can do is to offer one's own innermost thoughts on how the account of human nature that has been presented might unfold – according to one's own experience of human nature – which is, obviously, the purpose of the entire exercise. The extent to which the story can provoke such an extremely wide range of (otherwise equipollent) predictions of the participants' subsequent behaviour is one of the reasons the story has been so popular over time.
* The beer question ( U.S. politics)

Physics

* Bell's spaceship paradox (special relativity)
* Brownian ratchet (Richard Feynman's "perpetual motion" machine that does not violate the second law and does no work at thermal equilibrium)
* Bucket argument – argues that space is absolute, not relational
* Dyson sphere
* Einstein's box
* Elitzur–Vaidman bomb-tester (quantum mechanics)
* EPR paradox (quantum mechanics) (forms of this have been performed)
* Everett phone (quantum mechanics)
* Feynman sprinkler (classical mechanics)
* Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment (rebuttal of Aristotelian Gravity)
* Galileo's ship (classical relativity principle) 1632
* GHZ experiment (quantum mechanics)
* Heisenberg's microscope (quantum mechanics)
* Kepler's Dream (change of point of view as support for the Copernican hypothesis)
* Ladder paradox (special relativity)
* Laplace's demon
* Maxwell's demon (thermodynamics) 1871
* Mermin's device (quantum mechanics)
* Moving magnet and conductor problem
* Newton's cannonball (Newton's laws of motion)
* Popper's experiment (quantum mechanics)
* Quantum pseudo telepathy (quantum mechanics)
* Quantum suicide and immortality (quantum mechanics)
* Renninger negative-result experiment (quantum mechanics)
* Schrödinger's cat (quantum mechanics)
* Sticky bead argument (general relativity)
* The Monkey and the Hunter (gravitation)
* Twin paradox (special relativity)
* Wheeler's delayed choice experiment (quantum mechanics)
* Wigner's friend (quantum mechanics)

Philosophy

* Artificial brain
* Avicenna's Floating Man
* Beetle in a box
* '' Bellum omnium contra omnes''
* Big Book (ethics)
* Brain-in-a-vat (epistemology, philosophy of mind)
* Brainstorm machine
* Buridan's ass
* Changing places ( reflexive monism, philosophy of mind)
* Chesterton's fence
* China brain (physicalism, philosophy of mind)
* Chinese room (philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, cognitive science)
* Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy)
* Condillac's Statue (epistemology)
* Experience machine (ethics)
* Gettier problem (epistemology)
* Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (epistemology)
* Hilary Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind
* If a tree falls in a forest
* Inverted spectrum
* Kavka's toxin puzzle
* Mary's room (philosophy of mind)
* Molyneux's Problem (admittedly, this oscillated between empirical and a-priori assessment)
* Newcomb's paradox
* Original position (politics)
* Philosophical zombie (philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, cognitive science)
* Plank of Carneades
* Roko's basilisk
* Ship of Theseus, The (concept of identity)
* Shoemaker's "''Time Without Change''" (metaphysics)
* Simulated reality (philosophy, computer science, cognitive science)
* Social contract theories
* Survival lottery (ethics)
* Swamp man (personal identity, philosophy of mind)
* Teleportation (metaphysics)
* The transparent eyeball
* The violinist (ethics)
* Ticking time bomb scenario (ethics)
* Trolley problem (ethics)
* Utility monster (ethics)
* Zeno's paradoxes (classical Greek problems of the infinite)

Mathematics

* Balls and vase problem (infinity and cardinality)
* Gabriel's Horn (infinity)
* Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel (infinity)
* Infinite monkey theorem (probability)
* Lottery paradox (probability)
* Sleeping beauty paradox (probability)

Biology

* Levinthal paradox
* Rotating locomotion in living systems

Computer science

* Braitenberg vehicles (robotics, neural control and sensing systems) (some have been built)
* Dining Philosophers (computer science)
* Halting problem (limits of computability)
* Turing machine (limits of computability)
* Two Generals' Problem

Economics

* Broken window fallacy ( law of unintended consequences, opportunity cost)
* Laffer Curve

See also

* Alternate history
*
*
* Brainstorm machine
* '' Ding an sich''
* Einstein's thought experiments
* Futures studies
* Futures techniques
* Heuristic
*
* Koan
* Mathematical proof
* N-universes
* Possible world
* Scenario planning
* Scenario test
* Theoretical physics

Notes

References

Further reading

Brendal, Elke, "Intuition Pumps and the Proper Use of Thought Experiments", ''Dialectica'', Vol.58, No.1, (March 2004, pp. 89–108.

* Ćorić, Dragana (2020), "The Importance of Thought Experiments", ''Journal of Eastern-European Criminal Law'', Vol.2020, No.1, (2020), pp. 127–135.

Cucic, D.A. & Nikolic, A.S., "A short insight about thought experiment in modern physics", ''6th International Conference of the Balkan Physical Union BPU6'', Istanbul – Turkey, 2006.
* Dennett, D.C., "Intuition Pumps", pp. 180–197 in Brockman, J., ''The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution'', Simon & Schuster, (New York), 1995.

Galton, F., "Statistics of Mental Imagery", ''Mind'', Vol.5, No.19, (July 1880), pp. 301–318.
* Hempel, C.G., "Typological Methods in the Natural and Social Sciences", pp. 155–171 in Hempel, C.G. (ed.), ''Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science'', The Free Press, (New York), 1965.
* Jacques, V., Wu, E., Grosshans, F., Treussart, F., Grangier, P. Aspect, A., & Roch, J. (2007)
Experimental Realization of Wheeler's Delayed-Choice Gedanken Experiment
''Science, 315'', p. 966–968.
* Kuhn, T., "A Function for Thought Experiments", in ''The Essential Tension'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 240–265.
* Mach, E.
"On Thought Experiments", pp. 134–147 in Mach, E., ''Knowledge and Error: Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry'', D. Reidel Publishing Co., (Dordrecht), 1976. [Translation of ''Erkenntnis und Irrtum'' (5th edition, 1926.].
* Popper, K.
"On the Use and Misuse of Imaginary Experiments, Especially in Quantum Theory"
pp. 442–456, in Popper, K., ''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'', Harper Torchbooks, (New York), 1968.
* Stuart, M. T., Fehige, Y. and Brown, J. R. (2018). The Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments. London: Routledge.
* Witt-Hansen, J., "H.C. Ørsted, Immanuel Kant and the Thought Experiment", ''Danish Yearbook of Philosophy'', Vol.13, (1976), pp. 48–65.

Bibliography

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''Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy''
Rowman & Littlefield, (Savage), 1991.
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* . Translated to English by Karen Jelved, Andrew D. Jackson, and Ole Knudsen, (translators 1997).
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* Wilkes, K.V., ''Real People: Personal Identity without Thought Experiments'', Oxford University Press, (Oxford), 1988.

Yeates, L.B., ''Thought Experimentation: A Cognitive Approach'', Graduate Diploma in Arts (By Research) Dissertation, University of New South Wales, 2004.

External links

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Short essay by S. Abbas Raza of '' 3 Quarks Daily''

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